If we go down to ourselves, we find that we possess
exactly what we desire.*
Simone Weil

The ego wants nothing less than to see God. The soul knows, however, that if the Divine were to appear, the ego would not recognise it. The heavens cannot open for the soul; they are already open.**
James Carse

Life is too short to explore
all that is open to us,
But it is also enough.

*John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty;
**James Carse’s Breakfast at the Victory.

To enter a wood is to pass into a different world in which we ourselves are transformed, it is where you travel to find yourself, often, paradoxically, by getting lost.*
Roger Deakin

Mystical vision is the way the soul sees.**
James Carse

A wood will do it, or
the openness of a beach unencumbered
by people or their “augmentations” –
But also a book or listening to someone’s story or gardening or
eyes closed and listening for 4′ 33″ …

Where do you go to become lost,
Yet know exactly where you are?

*Robert Macfarlane’s Landmarks;
**James Carse’s Breakfast at the Victory.

And no matter how hard you look, you’re almost invisible
to yourself,
Camouflaged by familiarity.*
Verlyn Klinkenborg

I don’t think you can know a place unless you walk it, because it isn’t about distance, but about content.**
Chris Arnade

We discover more about the person we can become
on the journey from the
familiar to the unfamiliar,
From the centre, to the edges –
Slowly, because we want to take in more,
We want to feed the soul.

The ego is concerned with centres, the soul lives on margins, circumferences, horizons.^

*Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several short sentences about writing;
**Chris Arnade’s post: Why I Walk;
^James Carse’s Breakfast at the Victory.

The lecture was so perfectly adequate it left almost nothing to be said. And for that reason, it said nothing.*
James Carse

Once across [the threshold], the hero is swallowed by the unknown, be it a whale, a wolf, a sarcophagus, or a cave.**
Jean Houston

I replace James Carse’s “lecture” with “life” –
And, seeking to avoid the perfectly adequate life,
I cross the threshold.

*James Carse’s Breakfast at the Victory;
**Jean Houston’s A Mythic Life.

Joseph Campbell made it clear that the journey of the hero was also an allegory of the soul’s journey towards enightenment.*
Jean Houston

Those we call teachers may or may not be teachers. Those around whom surprising thinking emerges are teachers.**
James Carse

You can’t,
Neither can I enlighten you –
It takes form in a place
we fashion together,
In a to-and-fro-ness of lives,
In openness and a willingness
to receive:
I’ve heard it said
there’s a window that opens
from one mind to
another,
but if there’s no wall,
there’s no need for fitting a window,
or the latch.^

*Jean Houston’s A Mythic Life;
**James Carse’s Breakfast at the Victory;
**Rumi, from James Carse’s Breakfast at the Victory.

Only that day dawns to which we are awake.*
Henry David Thoreau

Creativity is not doing something, it is looking through whatever we do with the eye of the sleepless watcher, it is remaining through whatever we say an uncritically receptive listener.**
James Carse

Slow down,
Be quiet,
Open up,
Hang around,
Ask questions,
Notice 2.0:
the more you study
delight,
the more
delight
there is to study^ –
Still, I miss so much,
I’ll keep trying.

The test of a student is not how much he knows, but how much he wants to know.^^

*Krista Tippett’s Becoming Wise;
**James Clear’s Breakfast at the Victory;
^Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights;
^^Alice Wellington Rollins, from James Clear’s 3-2-1 newsletter: On the shortness of life, what mastery requires, and how to overlap the things you love.

Many people live half lives, turning the rheostat down to a very dim version of who and what they really are.*
Jean Houston

And then the knowledge comes to me that I have space within me for a second, timeless, larger life.**
Rainer Maria Rilke

It doesn’t feel like a half life,
Just life,
Until we notice,
Out of the corner of our eye,
A burning bush,
And, wandering over,
We find our holy ground.

Without direct, positive, informational knowledge, it is impossible to live at all. Without apophatic knowledge, it is impossible to be human.^

*Jean Houston’s A Mythic Life;
**David Brook’s The Second Mountain;
^James Carse’s Breakfast at the Victory.

There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have.*
Howard Thurman

It’s not what we don’t know but what we do know that limits us.**
James Carse

Our best guide will be one who knows
that they do not know more than
they do know:
Amen, let the adventure continue.

*Brian McLaren’s God Unbound;
**James Carse’s Breakfast at the Victory.

What I actually saw as my problem is actually a crucial resource.*
Stephen Gilligan

By trying to order the garden of our lives according to some design alien to it, we find ourselves at war with its innate exuberance, its non-stop self-transformation … Since we can only be as we are seen, whoever looks at us plays a part in creating us and the world we live in.**
James Carse

I had not seen all the ideas I had as being a problem,
It was someone else who saw them in this way –
I became increasingly reticent
until someone else saw me quite differently,
Encouraging me to pursue what I deeply loved –
Then my problem became a resource that
changed the direction of my life.

I think what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonancy within our innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.^

*Stephen Gilligan and Rober Dilts’ The Hero’s Journey;
**James Carse’s Breakfast at the Victory;
^Joseph Campbell, from Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers’ The Power of Myth.

To be generative, you cannot only be serious. You’ve got to be able to play.*
Robert Dilts

Everything changes once you see the universe is designed for abundance and not for scarcity. It not only changes the condition of your life but it changes you.**
Erwin McManus

To make less with more,
Only be serious,
To make more with less,
Add some play.

Play is for all-the-time,
Not just for when you are not working,
See how wasteful serious has made us,
But playfulness lets nothing go to waste.

*Stephen Gilligan’s and Robert Dilts’ The Hero”s Journey;
**ErwnMcManus’ The Last Arrow.